


No Sharp Objects Allowed In Limbo

by alkjira



Series: Up Into The Silence [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Canon, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 03:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2333609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alkjira/pseuds/alkjira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luc Richter is a famous model. He is not 'Dori', regardless of what this girl believes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Sharp Objects Allowed In Limbo

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is a thing.  
> I like this thing.  
> But I have no idea what this thing really is.  
> And it's kind of a small thing.  
> But hey, hope you'll like it too.

"Dori?"  
  
Luc startled as a hand touched his shoulder. His knee banged up against the underside of the table and upended his tea cup, the amber liquid quickly spreading out over the table and dripping down to the floor.  
  
Annoyed, Luc looked up at the person who had disturbed him.

She was young, with dark skin and darker eyes, and with a myriad of black tattoos trailing up her arms to disappear into her green sleeveless t-shirt.

"No autographs, rien,” Luc said more on autopilot than anything else. As the girl didn’t know his name she likely hadn’t been-  
  
"Dori?” She gently squeezed his shoulder. “It’s me.”

Luc snorted and shrugged off her hand. “Good for you, chérie. But who'eva Dori is, 'e is not me." He gestured to the table. "And si- _if_ you find 'im, I 'ope you will not frighten 'im to death as you almost did me."

She looked searchingly at him, perhaps realising that while she might have _thought_ she recognized him, it was only from a magazine, and not because she really knew him. It had happened before. The only thing strange about it was that the girl looked a little familiar somehow, but Luc was quite sure that he had never met her before. He had a good memory for things like that. But perhaps she was in the business as well?  
  
Finally, she shook her head and Luc expected to hear an apology, but instead he was offered a small smile.

"No, I believe I have the right of it."  
  
A waiter came running up with a handful of paper towels, a new cup of tea, and a mouthful of excuses as if he had been the one to cause him to spill the first cup, and Luc thanked him politely but absently, his attention still focused on this strange young woman as she pulled out a pen from her pocket and scribbled a phone number on one of the dry white paper towels lying on the table.  
  
“I don't think you'll keep this, so ’ll be back here tomorrow,” she said. “I- It- I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, Dori.”  
  
“I am not this Dori,” Luc protested. He had never wanted to tell anyone the old tired line of ‘Do you not know who I _am_?’ but he was beginning to wish he was that kind of person. Half the café had been looking while he’d ordered. _They_ knew who he was. Unless, as Bastien would claim, they were only looking at his backside.  
  
Instead of the apology he was still waiting for from the girl, he got another smile. And then she walked away.  
  
Huffing, Luc reached for his new, steaming cup of tea. The English, not as crazy as Americans, but it was close.  
  
-  
  
A thunderstorm swept over London that night, and Luc pulled back the curtains from the hotel windows to watch as golden cracks appeared to rip at the sky. He caught himself standing just a little too straight, at an angle that would be suitable had there been a photographer in the room with him, and he laughed a little at himself before deliberately slouching a bit.  
  
The storm was still raging on as he slid into the bed, and the wind had changed, and now his windows were being pelted with rain.  
  
As the glass was thick enough to keep the worst of the thunder out, what remained was rather soothing, and the sound of the storm quickly carried him away into sleep.  
  
-  
  
 _“My lovely moonstone,” a deep voice murmured to him, rumbling in the chest pressed up against his back._ _“I believed I would lose you today. Those giants-“_  
 __  
“Shh,” Dori whispered, curling closer in the darkness. “Never.”  
  
Then the ground opened up beneath them both.  
  
-  
  
Luc gasped as he sat up in the bed. For just a few moments the dream appeared to follow him into the waking world, and he turned, expecting to see someone in bed with him.  
  
But of course that side of the bed was empty.  
  
Pressing his palm to his chest, feeling the rapid thud, thud, thud of his heart, Luc let himself collapse back into the bed once more. Outside the thunder rumbled on.  
  
Despite the adrenaline, it did not take long for Luc to fall asleep once more.  
  
-  
  
 _The dark girl looked at him, love shining out of her eyes. As she leaned forward for a kiss Luc stretched up to meet her, and he hummed happily as their beards rubbed against each other._

-  
  
Luc snapped awake and stared up at the ceiling with big eyes.  
  
“Bordel de merde,” he breathed, reaching up to rub at his smooth jaw.  
  
-  
  
The next time he woke up, he did not even try to fall asleep again.  
  
-  
  
  
“You _put_ something in my tea yesterday,” Luc accused the dark girl.  
  
She had been watching the door as he’d walked into the café, smiling brightly at him as he immediately headed towards the little corner table she was sitting by. Now she shook her head, a small smile playing around her mouth,  much like it'd been yesterday, and it was maddening.  
  
“I did not,” she said.  
  
“My dreams-“ Luc glared down at her. “I wake up, and wake up, and my dreams, always the same.” Except that wasn’t entirely true. Not always the same, but always-

“What’s my name, Dori?” she asked, looking up at him with that same small smile.

“I do _not_ know you,” Luc growled, and the girl had the audacity to grin up at him and _laugh_. She kicked out the chair on the opposite side of the table. “ _If you would sit down, we could talk about this in peace.”_

“Non,” Luc seethed. “We will not-“ he stopped, head tilting to the side. “What did you just say?”  
  
“You understood me well enough I think,” the girl said, her grin widening.  
  
“I did not!”  
  
“ _You did_ ,” the girl said, in that same strange language she’d just used. The same strange language that Luc had no trouble understanding every single word of. _“Dori, my heart. You don’t always have to be stubborn. Sit down._ ”

She nudged a cup of tea towards him. “Peppermint, I hope it’s still your favourite?”  
  
It was his favourite, and it was _not_ what he’d been drinking yesterday so she could not have learnt about it that way. Had she been stalking him? Luc took a step back. “I do not-“  
  
“Dori, what’s my name?” She looked up at him, and Luc had to grip the back of the chair as the world suddenly decided to roll beneath him. “ _Say my name, treasure.”_  
  
His grip on the chair tightened, and tightened still, and Luc half-expected it to crack because that was what things did when he got too rough with them, only- only they did not- because-  
  
“Bifur?”

And Bifur’s grin widened even more as Dori shakily sank down on the chair, brown eyes round and large, and mouth open in shock.  
  
-  
  
An hour later they were still at the café.

Bifur shrugged. "I'm not bothered to be like this. It didn't even take some getting used to, it was just how I'd grown up even if it wasn't how I'd always been. But there was nothing strange about it. It certainly didn't feel like I'd just woke up one day with breasts and a cunt, though I guess-"  
  
"We are _en public,_ " Dori hissed.

"Call me whatever you feel like, is my point," Bifur smiled. “As long as you remember who I am.”  
  
“And you saw _me_ , right away,” Dori murmured. “But I did not-“  
  
Bifur reached over the table and placed his, her, _his_ hand over Dori’s. The difference in their skin colour was not nearly as strange as how Bifur’s hand was now markedly smaller than his. There were no callouses either. No white thin scars. His knuckles were small, and his arms were almost hairless. But it was every bit as warm as Dori remembered.  
  
“You hadn’t even remembered yourself yet,” Bifur said quietly. “Bit selfish of me if I'd expect you to start with me.”

-  
  
Eventually they left the café, walking hand in hand towards- Dori didn’t even know. But he would follow Bifur anywhere. The thought that he, _Luc_ , might have had a nervous breakdown of some sort had occurred to him, but he had quickly dismissed it. Folie à deux… no, that was not it. That could not be it. This was more real than anything he'd ever experienced before.  
  
“’ow did you know?” Dori asked quietly.  
  
“I just knew,” Bifur said, shrugging slightly. “I’ve been looking for you. And finding you… Finding you makes me think something wanted me to find you.”  
  
“Wanted..?”  
  
“Seven billion people on this planet, love,” Bifur said and squeezed his hand. “And still I find you.” He smiled, white teeth flashing. “I should have known to look in those fancy magazines, then I’d found you quicker. My fault.”  
  
“You-“ Dori hesitated. “I am not the same.”  
  
Bifur’s laugh was as rich and powerful as it had ever been, but brighter. Dori nudged him to the side of the trottoir once it became obvious that he was laughing too much to keep walking. As Bifur wheezed and straightened up, he fumbled for Dori’s hand, pulling it to cup his left breast.  
  
“Bifur,” Dori protested, looking around.  
  
“My point,” Bifur snickered. “Is that none of us are the same. But you were beautiful before, so I should not have been surprised to see that remained the same.”  
  
“I wanted to create clothes, not wear them,” Dori murmured. “But this was easier. And the pay- I had the need, for my brothers-“  
  
"Brothers?" Bifur reached up to press his hand to Dori’s cheek. “Nori, and Ori?”  
  
Dori blinked. "I-" Memories of Sebastien and Thierry danced in front of his eyes only for them to be replaced with memories Nori and Ori.  
  
Ori who had been lost to them- And Nori too, lost after Ori- But no. No, not lost. Because-

"J'ai besoin de m'asseoir un peu," Dori murmured, his English giving way in the same manner his legs felt like doing.  
  
His brothers, they were Nori and Ori. Bastien and Thierry, Nori and Ori. He had not lost them. He had them all along. Even without knowing it. Even without knowing that he once had lost them.

"Dori?" Bifur asked worriedly, his smaller frame unable to support Dori as he sank down to the ground, his arse meeting the unforgiving pavement. But he didn't feel it.  
  
"C'est bon," Dori replied faintly. "Je- I- I did not know to miss them. But for one moment I thought I 'ad lost- it was-." He blinked away the tears gathering in his eyes. "But I 'ave not lost them. My brothers are my brothers." He looked up at Bifur who had crouched at his side. “Bofur, Bombur," Dori said urgently. "Are they-?"  
  
"With me," Bifur smiled. "They’ve not always been. But they are now, and that’s the important part.” He gently stroked his finger over Dori’s cheek wiping away a stray tear. “And now I have you too. And soon enough Nori and Ori. They’ll remember, like you did. Like I said, it's like something wants us to be together.” He pressed their foreheads together. “ _Dori, my treasure_. _I love you so._ "  
  
And Dori reached out to wrap himself as tight as he could around Bifur, their bodies not fitting together in all the ways that they used to, but it didn’t matter because it was still Bifur.  
  
Eyes stinging Dori blindly pressed kisses to Bifur’s face before he found his lips, and they were not the same either, but it didn’t matter. They were together now.

**Author's Note:**

> Maaaaaybe, just maaaaaybe, this thing is in the same verse as this thing.
> 
>  
> 
> [Another world](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1020690)
> 
>  
> 
> Maybe.
> 
> (Is the attempt to make Dori's speech sound more like French annoying or not? I tried my best not to cross the line.)


End file.
